Five young sisters living in a coastal Turkish village on the Black Sea are placed under the tyrannical regime of traditional morality by their guardians, in the poignant, award-winning first feature by Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Like wild horses cantering freely, there's
nothing more natural than a girl becoming
a woman. It's the suppression of this
innocent natural development that Deniz
Gamze Ergüven poignantly examines in
her first feature, Mustang, winner of the
Europa Cinemas Label award at the Cannes
Directors' Fortnight.

The film opens in a remote Turkish
coastal village on the Black Sea as the
school year ends for five sisters. But this
will not be a summer filled with fun and
childhood mischief. When a neighbour
observes the long-haired, long-limbed girls
at the beach, engaged in what she views as
scandalous behaviour, she reports them
to their grandmother and uncle, who have
been the sisters' guardians ever since the
death of their parents. And so harmless
play becomes the catalyst for physical and
emotional imprisonment.

All "instruments of corruption" and
pop-culture artifacts are removed from
the house, girly outfits are replaced with
formless brown dresses, and, following a
brief escape to an all-female soccer match,
bars are installed on the windows and gates
erected at the home's entrance. As village
aunties visit to instruct the girls in domestic
duties and suitors begin to arrive, the house
becomes a veritable "wife factory." The
eldest sisters are subjected to virginity tests
and married off one by one, and the younger
sisters look on in fear, resolving not to succumb
to the same fate.

Co-written by Ergüven and Alice
Winocour (director of Disorder, also at this
year's Festival), Mustang is a sensitive and
powerful portrait of sisterhood and burgeoning
sexuality. Ergüven elicits wonderfully
naturalistic performances from her mostly
non-professional actors, who bring a vibrant,
youthful energy to the film. Though the film
has distinct echoes of Sofia Coppola's The
Virgin Suicides, it nevertheless signals the
emergence of a singular and fierce new voice
in Turkish cinema.